American Chestnuts

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Many years ago there was a GREAT TREE in America. It was called an American Chestnut tree. I have an oak tree that is around 200 years old and it is tall, a hundred feet tall but it was small compared to a Chestnut that could grow to be 200 feet or taller.



Around the year 1900, there were 4 billion chestnut trees in the U.S. But a blight entered this country from China and killed them off. This was such a great tree.

But in a few remote areas one or two of these trees survived and now they are trying to bring them back.

I went out into the end of my property and looked. Yes it looks like another good year for my chestnuts, my American chestnut trees. I pulled a couple chestnuts off the tree and brought them into my home this morning. It is like a dead tree that has come back to life.

There are horse chestnut trees growing along outside my apartment. Years ago I knew someone who picked up chestnuts that had fallen on the ground, saying she was going to roast and eat them. I told her she shouldn't because those were horse chestnuts, which are poisonous, but she said they were fine and she had eaten them before.

Well, I've never eaten them because I'm still positive they will make my kidneys shut down or something. They do look and feel really nice, though. The seeds, I mean, not their spiny shells.

Thanx for posting. Very informative. Love the folksy narrator.

I cant read the title without thinking of the mixed nuts from Happy Days.
Don't get many chestnuts downunder

Chestnuts are very popular in Italy. You can go into the woods and pick them up ff the ground in season. It's a real shame about the blight that killed off most of the chestnut trees in the US.

There are different types of chestnuts. Horse Chestnuts can be dangerous. According to the internet:

-- The raw seeds, bark, flowers, and leaves of horse chestnut are unsafe because they contain a toxic component. Standardized horse chestnut seed extracts, from which this component has been removed, appear to be safe for short-term use.

-- Horse chestnut seed extracts are generally well tolerated but may cause side effects such as dizziness, nausea, and digestive upsets in some people.



This is a very different tree from an American Chestnut tree.

The chestnut is the most useful tree in the world. There are 4 major species – American Chestnut (Castanea dentata), European Chestnut (C. sativa), Chinese Chestnut (C. mollissima) and Japanese Chestnut (C. crenata).

Which one is aka "the Horse chestnut"?

None of them. Horse chestnut is genus Aesculus

This is the horse chestnut. It looks very different then an American Chestnut.

American Chestnuts are a very different tree.

https://youtu.be/-xgbedXnbfw

Every American since the 1940s has grown up hearing this song every Xmas. But very few living Americans have ever actually seen, smelled, nor tasted "chestnuts roasting on an open fire".

Thats what were talking about on this thread.


https://youtu.be/8fxmh9srt1w

When I was growing up this was the song that you heard at Christmas time. But by then, most of the millions of chestnut trees were already dead.

So my chestnuts trees are growing and this year they are producing chestnuts. I remember a couple years ago that happened. My children and grandchildren came to visit. They made an open fire and cooked some of the chestnut trees that the trees produced that year. And we sat around and ate roasted chestnuts.

This year my trees are producing once again and I think the harvest is growing.

It is time to harvest our American Chestnuts. I went down to the trees that I planted about 10 years ago and my wife picked the nuts from the tree. We had around a 6 gallon bucket of outer tree nuts before they were cracked open. So we gathered them up and took them home.

My wife asked, O.K. what do we do with them????
I said we break them open and take out the nuts.
She said, that is not good enough. How do I process the nuts?
I do not know?
She said, Look it up.

So I began to search the Internet and found the following article:

Harvesting Chestnut Trees

I thought to myself, I am so glad someone invented the Internet.

The article said: "Are you ready to enjoy delicious homegrown nuts?"

I screamed out YES.

The article then went on to say, "It is best to harvest every other day for 3 to 4 weeks to maintain nut quality. For the best quality and size, chestnuts should be left on the tree to fall naturally soon after burs split open and then harvest promptly. This usually occurs from September through October."

O.K. but we are in the middle of September and the nuts are beginning to fall. It is hard to find the nuts after they fall open and scatter on the grown. I do not think a day or two will make a large difference.

Then the article went on to say, "Fresh chestnuts (in shell) can be kept in the refrigerator or a cool, dry place for several months. For long-term storage you will need to dry them first, then refrigerator or freeze. When drying nuts good air circulation is important. They need to dry between 2 to 4 days depending on the temperature. Nuts will be hard when dry and can be rehydrated in boiling water. Store in tightly sealed containers."

So I guess I need to crack them from the sharp spiky shell and store the nuts in the refrigerator.

This article describes harvesting Chestnuts.

Last edited by jimmy m on 19 Sep 2024, 10:09 am, edited 1 time in total.

Oh. I always assumed this song was about sweet chestnuts, which is a tree we have in Europe (Castanea sativa), maybe in US too, I don't know. But sweet chestnuts are the ones we eat here. You don't eat horse chestnuts. You play conkers with those.

Sweet chestnut is an interesting wood. Its boughs tend to be quite twisty, so it's strong but difficult to work. It's generally not much good for burning either, too sappy, but if you can get it really dry before you burn it it smells lovely when it burns.

I'm sorry your American Chestnuts got blighted out of existence. A similar thing happened in the UK to our Elm trees which were once the defining characteristic of the British countryside. Few young people growing up now will ever have seen an Elm. It's happening with Ash too now.